magical jewish toffee

That caught your attention, now, didn’t it?

This recipe is surprisingly short and simple. And sweet. You can run to your kitchen to make it in the middle of a dinner party while your guests digest their food in the other room. Toffee will just appear before your eyes, and, seeing how very easy it is to make, you will wonder why you never bothered before.

hot date

This recipe is adapted from Janna Gur’s The Book of New Israeli Food: A Culinary Journey (New York, Schocken, 2007). As Rana mentioned in the last post, I worked on a paper last semester that involved reading a few dozen Israeli cookbooks. This was the only recipe from all of those books that sounded so ridiculously delectable that I wrote it down and resolved to make it one day. I did not regret it. Neither will you.

You’ll need:

1/2 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup sugar
2 T water
20 dates, pitted
3 tsp sesame seeds (the original recipe called for poppy seeds. I thought sesame would look nicer, be less likely to get stuck in one’s teeth, and also allow for maximum Ali Baba-themed punnery)

Heat 1/2 cup cream in a double boiler. In a small saucepan dissolve sugar in water, turn up heat, and boil till golden (it will be bubbly and gorgeous).

Remove from heat and stir in hot cream. Bring to boil and cook for 5 minutes, stirring. Toffee will appear before your eyes. Once it does, stir in the dates and sesame seeds and serve warm.

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I study culinary history and literature in North Africa and the Arabic speaking world; this blog is a record of what happens when I put my research and passions into play at my own stove.

Many of the recipes featured here hail from the Middle East & North Africa or elsewhere in the Mediterranean, but I also love to cook anything that happens to be in season. A recipe index lists all recipes alphabetically; you can also browse by category or search for keywords below.

For less cooking and more history & literature, check out my research blog. You can read more about my work here.